Today, we’re going to be speaking to Justine Alter, the author of Outside of the World. Justine is an ex professional psychic, ceremonial magician, lecturer, occulture political cartoonist, and used to be a director of a nonprofit for psychic resources.
How did you become Orthodox?
It was an accident, I suppose. I never meant to convert, even after my baptism. I wanted to acquire the seal of a trinitarian baptism in order to become a more powerful ceremonial magician. God had other plans.
You weren’t Orthodox when you were baptized?
No, I wasn’t. It wasn’t my priest’s fault. He didn’t know. I was coached by occultists on how to give a life confession that would make my baptism legitimate, but also provide space for me to hide within church settings.
Are there a lot of occultists that are hiding in church settings?
Yes. I’ve really been relating to Saint Porphyrios the Mime, recently. He was a mime that wanted to mock the Christians by imitating getting baptized. God miraculously legitimized what Saint Porphyrios tried to mock. Suddenly the mime realized the truth hidden within his ridicule, and was converted. I feel as though in my blasphemy, I was exposed to a legitimate spirituality that was too powerful to ignore. Now I am truly struggling to live an Orthodox life, and my book explains the process in how that came to be. It is important to me that I put this book out there in order to atone for my deception.
Tell us about the organization for psychics that you ran.
“Psychics” ( and what a controversial word that is) are either getting mocked by the majority of the western world, or they’re either getting used as disposable objects by the government or occultists that are hiding within plain sight. They are truly discarded by culture, and honestly, I think that’s done on purpose. I used to house and care for psychics that were escaping occult abuse in my college apartment.
Yes, there’s the stereotype of casual experimentation with tarot or party tricks, etc, but it’s not to be written off. Even that does damage, and if it continues long enough, more adversarial attention is attracted. Cold reading is another subject entirely. I used to get into fights with cold readers, unfortunately.
I see a lot of people ragging on “witchtok”. I was out before that started. Sure, it seems like it would give the impression of an absurdist fever dream, but I truly feel for those people, and there is a deep strand of my heart that longs for their salvation.
Tiktok, as well as Facebook and Instagram (as of 2021), now all explicitly rely on consumer eye tracking, dilation, and scrolling pacing in order to predict the content that they want to see. That was an unbearable change in consent for me. Social media felt as if I was in a fun house hall of mirrors, reflecting my psyche back to me.
People don’t realize that the ways that tech is changing is mimicking the functionality of demons. Computers and phones monitor our eye movements and pacing, trying to read our minds in order to manipulate us. While it’s nothing new, and spiritual warfare will exist on and off the screen, I truly believe that lines in the sand are being drawn further, and that discernment must be used to navigate this Brave New World.
Did anyone try to convert you while you were working as a psychic?
Sure, a few Protestants here and there, but ceremonial magicians have a really difficult time taking Protestants seriously. There’s less of a focus on spiritual law and boundaries. I think that’s what ritual is supposed to be. Boundaries for separation and a longing for discernment.
I met a few Orthodox people years later who were aware of my presence as an occult public figure that had been praying for my conversion, it meant the world to me to be able to thank them.
There was one man who followed my comics when I was an occultist, who had been discerning Orthodox monasticism. He prayed for me to give up magic, every single day for a year. He told me he had done that, after I gave it up.
“I didn’t tell you I was praying for you to do that, because I knew you’d be mad at me,” he said.
“But I didn’t really care about you, in that state, getting mad at me. I only cared about who your soul was in Christ.”
How long have you been Orthodox?
I was baptized in 2018, but truly converted in 2019, so we’re coming up on five years of legitimate Christianity.
Was it difficult to convert?
It was a complete loss of my career, my identity, any sense of control I had. Figuring out what to do with my life, after giving up all my prospects was crippling.
My body had started to become sick though, around the time I was receiving communion as an occultist. Clairvoyant monastics have brought it up to me in the past, without me saying anything, that my body has some legitimate issues that prevent me from fasting. It started around the time I was receiving communion while continuing my lifestyle as a ceremonial magician. I feel so dirty when they look at me sometimes.
Have you met a lot of clairvoyant monastics?
Yes. For over two years, I have only lived around and visited monasteries. It has helped me tremendously with my condition. You know, the church is a hospital, the monastery is the emergency room, etc.
What is your “condition”?
I grew up sensitive to the spiritual world, and dealt with demonic affliction, channeling, and “mind reading”, that secular society tried (and failed) to handle. I was heavily experimented on by neuroscientists, psychiatrists, etc around age 15, until everyone agreed I was most bothered by a debilitating insight into others’ minds, sort of pumped me with anti-anxiety meds and sedatives, then gave up.
Orthodox Christianity (see Fr Seraphim Rose’s understanding of “God’s supervision”) is the only thing that made it remotely possible for me to not have to consume any form of pharmaceutical on a regular basis.
My mother’s family is a Freemason/Eastern Star family that has a history of the women in the family becoming occultists, getting traumatized, then converting to Christianity.
One side of family separated from another, due to visions of blood all over a family member’s house walls. The owner of the house had driven a neighbor to an abortion clinic. There were lots of visions, psychic reading, dreams coming true, passing out in churches, etc. I used to be no different.
My dad’s side of the family utilized intuition for investing, social interaction, and oddly enough, awareness surrounding pregnancy. I’m not sure how far back anything goes when it comes to his side.
Was my situation nature or nurture? How much was hereditary, and how much was it what I was raised in? Did I have any resources in the Orthodox circles for this? I discuss that in my book.
What was it like working as a psychic?
Hell. Pure hell. Like I said before, people in my past circumstances are seen as disposable people. There are no rules or regulations for a profession only teenage girls, the underground, and the deep state believes in. I was pressured into sex work, conditioned to believe that my only worth in this life was letting demons take my body, and that that was the only way for me to live. It was drilled into my head that nobody but an occultist would ever understand, care for, or tolerate me. I became Orthodox in part because I wanted the free will that God was offering. I wanted personhood. I did not want to submit to a life of possession. That’s where this all ends, spoiler alert.
You get information from demons until you can’t think or function by yourself, and the end point is allowing them to occupy you forever, whether you have the illusion of control over the situation or not. I’ve been offered that in too many traditions to count.
I remember showing another sensitive person a picture of a ceremonial magician after a ritual. The magician’s eyes had changed color, they had become slightly red.
“They’re controlling the demons though,” I tried to explain to my sensitive roommate.
“Look at their eyes,” she said. “They’re getting played if they think that they’re ruling it. Demons will always rule magicians, no matter what the magicians believe to be the case. That’s all I see in this photo.”
Did your organization really predict 2020?
Yeah, but how is that impressive, really? 2020 had been a long time coming, and anything bodiless could see that train off in the distance. Bill Gates was giving preemptive speeches about a disease, our saints were predicting events surrounding it, etc. Demons see and hear all those things.
I still remember the day that my ex-roommate was experimenting with an occult text, went into a trance state, and started describing what was going to happen on a global scale. I just saw an article about NATO inciting WW3 actually, and immediately flashed back to memories of him talking about NATO around 2018.
I’ll tell you what’s impressive, yours and my tears of repentance, pushing back nightmarish events on a cosmic level through God’s mercy.
Demons either tell you water is wet, feed your ego, passions, and insecurities in strategic ways, or play two truths and a lie (as an old friend said) until they lead you off a cliff.
Thank you for your time Justine.
Thank you. Lord have mercy.
Justine’s book, Outside of the World, is available in our Etsy shop or through mail order.
Chilling and hopeful at the same time.